FF VII VS. FF VIII - The Final Duel

[Excalibur1027]

Even though I don't really like either of them that much, I guess FFVII gets my vote simply because it was my first Playstation game, and the experience was memorable. Plus, Vincent and Nanaki were just cool.

FFVIII just couldn't hold my interest. I didn't really like any of the characters, the junction system was way to unbalanced, and drawing literally sucked the fun out of the game for me. The only redeeming factors FFVIII had in my opinion were the boss theme, and Triple Triad.
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[Ashitaka]

VIII all the whay.
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kill your enemy before your enemy kills you.

[Ashitaka]

I like both almost equally. There should be options to vote for both and neither.
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kill your enemy before your enemy kills you.

[Elc]

That would defeat the purpose of asking someone which is better. It's like in an election, you can't vote for Bush and Kerry, but you can abstain from voting if you don't like either option.

I generally find something to enjoy in just about any game I play, but Final Fantasy VIII really fumbled when it came to the soundtrack (in my opinion) and the junction system didn't do anything for me. I still intend to play it through to completion (whenever that may be) but I'll need to find a few good CDs to listen to while I play.

Excalibur1027, I agree that drawing literally sucked the fun out of the game, but imagine doing so on the PC version with the game running at half speed! Using Guardian Forces was a nightmare. Thankfully, I have since tracked down the PSX versions of both Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII.
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"You make me smash the clock and feel, I'd rather die behind the wheel.
Time was never on my side, So on I wait my whole lifetime."

[Excalibur1027]

Oh right! Thanks for reminding me Elc! Not giving us a skip button for the GFs was a major blunder on Squares part. Possibly the biggest mistake of FFVIII, if you consider how many times you have to sit through those animations. And I can understand your pain, Elc. My friend played through FFVIII for the first time on the PC version and she hated almost every minute of it.
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[Kane of the Black Sea]

VII is better in a few ways like Magic. Magic is basically usless in VIII, which takes away an aspect that is in every rpg I can bring to mind. It also doesn't have the Weapons which are great side quest. Chocobo raising is better in VII. Not to mention VIII's final boss wasn't very good, especially when compared to Sepheroth.
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Nameless Lands : Chikei - Avenging Star
Sig art by ardPSiko

All I want out of Life it to be a monkey of moderate intelligence who wears a suit.

[Vincent Chase]

I like the majority have thrown in my vote for Final Fantasy VII. FF8 had it's good points (Mainly Rinoa, Balamb and it's music), but all of this was beaten by what was seen in 7. 8 also had alot of things that dragged it down, such as confusing Junctioning, and a protagonist that takes time to grow on you.

People blow Sephiroth out of proportion because they don't realize that the Majority of the stuff he does in the game is caused by JENOVA and not his own power. Sephiroth is dead...he died in the Nibel Reactor when Cloud stabbed him, but his body drifted through the Lifestream to the North (which is close to both JENOVA and WEAPONs), because of the Jenova Cells in his body and his strength. Don't forget that Jenova is supposed to have Godlike Powers, and would be easily capable of creating such illusions, and storing some of her power in a human form.

Overall, I liked FFVIII's characters (for the most part, didn't care for Squall, Seifer and Edea). Junctioning got confusing, keeping track of who had what ability and who I needed to use. That said, I am sure this would work alot better if you could switch characters on the fly, as in FFX. The music was also extremely solid, as it usually is, but again, FFVII beats it in all of these areas: Having a cast of all great characters (except Cait Sith, but in theory even he is cool), the music is grade A, with alot of the best tracks in the series, and the story, which falls apart late in the game, is still innovative and revolutionary (Any game where people still don't understand everything about it 8 years later has to be).

[Atavaka]

On this one, I'm siding with Final Fantasy VIII. Both games are alright (at least), but I was never as attached to VII as I was to VIII. Here's my reasoning:

Graphics. Shallow, yes, but still a valid reason to dislike a game. I played Final Fantasy IX before either of these games, and was expecting something close or on par to that. VIII was essentially the same as IX, while VII unofortnately wasn't. The towns were often ugly, the battle graphics mediocre to ugly, and the characters were way too deformed for my tastes. VIII's battle animations and CG cut scenes were ridiculously better and more memorable, so this category goes unarguably to VIII.

Storyline: This is where I really give VII a lot of grief. I continously felt the storyline was weak, if not occasionally nonexsistant. There were some excellent moments in the game which truly had the workings of a legendary storyline, followed by hours of unexplained wandering. For some reason, I kept feeling that half of the game was spent going from one overworld location to the next with little reasoning as to why. In such a linear game, having such a disconnected plotline distances the story from the player. I was very, very bored about halfway through the game (even following a certain tragic sequence that meant absolutely nothing to me).

VIII's storyline, while certainly not being the best game storyline ever, was still very addicting. I wanted to see what happened next and the scenes were incredibly emotional and drawing. I only felt left hung out to dry once, but I figured out where to go next after about twenty minutes of wandering (which is far less than what happened to me in VII, let me tell you).

Characters: VII's characters where eclectic and fairly interesting, but I never got the impression that they meshed and formed a 'group,' if you will. I still think Nanaki is one of the best hypothetical characters out there, simply because you don't often seen 'experiments' like this as main characters in a game. Cloud was too dry and boring for me to appreciate his background, but the depth was still there. Aeris was dull, and I didn't miss her. But the character that I truly despise is Sephiroth; he's not that great of a villain, folks. He's not a horrible one, but he's not the amazing be-all, end-all evil character that so many make him out to be. Why doesn't anyone say Rufus or Hojo made good villains? I felt they both had more development than Sephiroth. And, as The Hot Ice said, Jenova was controlling Sephiroth as she tried to control Cloud so many times before. Kinda ruins the big, bad swordsman image if he's being animated by an alien force, doesn't it?

VIII's characters were very, very interesting to me. They actually seemed to mesh together and form a group. I realize a lot of people don't like the orphanage connection, but it actually made sense to me for some reason... and made me like the characters a whole lot more. Squall grew on me after a while, as did Selphie (who I hated in the beginning). I always liked Zell, Irvine, and Quistis; having an unreciprocated crush in the game made me feel kind of bad for her. The characters just seemed a lot more real to me, even though you'll never meet someone as socially-inept as Squall on the street.

The gameplay is the only area where I felt both were equal. The materia system was pretty deep, if a little boring for me personally, while the junctioning system, despite being incredibly deep, was also incredibily complicated. I thought both were a nice, durastic change from the norm, but neither shone through as amazing to me.

Music was so, so much better in VIII. Don't get me wrong; I loved several tunes from VII, especially a certain battle theme, but there were also plenty of background themes I could've done without. Namely, the overworld theme. I hated it. In contrast, I liked a lot more of the tunes from VIII, and hated none of them. Several scenes were made by the music, becoming emotional and memorable all due to the song being played in the background. Where VII had some great music, VIII's achieved an abstract sense of being epic.

My vote might've been different if I played VII first, but for now, there's a lot more nostalgic value in VIII.

[Sierra Mikain]

Well to this day, Final Fantasy VIII has had about the only ending with a stupid song that I can remember nearly word for word. And that is sad because that ending music is really bad.

Characters:Both of these games had their share of stupid characters, but it is in the area of stupid characters that FF XIII excells. Take Zell for example, I'm not sure he could be uglier, but that is not the point. Every time the guy opens his mouth, I am annoyed. He contributed NOTHING to the story and could be deleted from the game and all there would be, is one less character. Wait... that means we could subtract just about EVERY character from VIII. There is a time when each and every character has to step up and do something, but the history of one is replaced by the history of them all at Edea's place. How cruddy...
Not that VII didn't have it's share of cruddy characters. Yuffie, Cid, Vincent, you could all get lost for lack of meaning. Although Cid's personality was just something that made him a descent character.

Graphics:As far as graphics goes, VIII takes the cake here. But if I had to give an edge to graphics, it would go to VII. How does that work you say? Well VIII came out after VII, and thus it isn't possible for the graphics to be better... but PROBABLE for them to. In fact, if the graphics weren't better, it would appear to be like FF IX. I was more astonished with the movie scenes in FFVII than I have been with any game since it's release.

Negatives:

Some things I cannot stand about FFVIII:
-The two other characters in your party follow you around when you walk through towns.
-Background work in towns very cruddy
-Lack of consistent character development across the board
-Lack of surprise in anything
-Lack of a story that draws you in
-Magic junctioning system
-4 Words: FITHOS, LUSEC, VECOS, VINOSEC

Some things I cannot stand about FFVII:
-Jenova
-Raising Chocobo's to get KOTR Summon
-Cait Sith
-Mwa ha ha and Gwa ha ha

Positives:

FFVIII does have one part that is so fun it's awesome. The assassination attempt on Edea at the end of Disc 1. That is something I will always remember about that game. The end castle was also very confusing and yet fun.

FFVII has a few parts that I also loved. My favorite was storming the Shin Ra building before you leave midgar early on in the first disc. Of course, it's a little less fun if you take the stairs around back... well... a lot less fun.

Conclusions:With all this being said, I might as well pick the winner: Final Fantasy VII

-for it's lack of numerous boring sections in the story
-for the materia system which I loved from day one
-for the better, more catchy music themes
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[Starslasher]

I can't believe i haven't voted yet...i thought that i would have seen this post somewhere...well, thanks to whoever revided this.

Like most people here, i had a tought time choosing which of the two to pick. The margin to me was pretty small. They each had their pros and cons to me. So i'll list them:

Final Fantasy VII
Pros:
- More than five weapons for each character (looks at the list of weapons Squall can have... :| )
- Tifa; so hot. I'd choose her over Aeris, to be frank. But it's only my opinion.
- Battle Music; Gave me goosebumps when i heard it first. The best out of all the battle musics in all of the FFs out there.
- One Winged Angel; It sooo kicks ass. One of the best tracks of the FF soundtrack.
- Chocobo Racing; I had fun ^_^. And it does help to get the ultimate Summon.
Cons:
- Summons had no personalities as in comparison to FFVIII's.
- Materia System was ok to me.
- That Don guy. And all the fat guys in there.

Now for Final Fantasy VIII

Final Fantasy VIII
Pros:
- Guardian Forces had lots of personalities. Yay, so much fun.
- Very fast, one you junction the speed.
- Ability to pull off moves that do 10,000+ damage
- Zell Dincht. Enough said.
- Better graphics than FFVII...
- some of the tracks, like Sucession of the Witches i.e. Edea's theme. And Premonition, the final Boss Battle track, and the tracks in which you fight Edea, if you can remember. Also gave me goosebumps.

Cons:
- Chocobo Side-quest. I don't have a PocketStation! Darn you Square for being so cruel!
- Seifer; so annoying.
- Raijin and Fujin being Seifer's lackeys; They're better than that!
- Other villians. Only Norgue was interesting. And Griever.

that's all i can think of for now. But overall i chose Final Fantasy VIII.
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Guardian of Greenhill & Devoted Protector of Oulan



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